


As a Bat

by swabloo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, pre lestrade/john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swabloo/pseuds/swabloo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade has awful eyesight. Everything more than a few feet away is a bit of a fuzzy blur. Vain bastard that he is, though, he refuses to wear his glasses out in public.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As a Bat

Greg was fifteen when he first realised he was turning into his grandpa. _Bugger_ , scowled his brain as he looked in the mirror, raking hands through his hair, teasing out the light greys that were already forming. It didn't help that they wore the same bottle-bottom glasses. He made a face, pulling at his skin to form wrinkles. Damnit. why couldn't his mum get him a nicer pair of specs? It wasn't hisfault his face was accident-prone.

Greg had always had a problem with his glasses. They stood on him like a lightning-rod for weird shit to be flung at it and get smashed. rocks, baseballs, basketballs, footballs, birds. _smaller children._

He looked at the photograph in his hand and felt a little hope swell in his chest. It was him on a beach on holiday sometime last somewhere, by some Spanish town he couldn't pronounce. In the picture, he was laughing and throwing water at his cousin. Before his hair started turning grey. His eyes were sparkling in the sunlight, fresh and clear without obstruction.

Greg stared at the photo where he wasn't wearing glasses and thought, _damn_ , I look _good._

He'd once tried wearing contacts, of course. But he had an allergic reaction to them or _something_ , because they'd made his eyes itch like hell and he'd been unable to do anything but squint for a week. He's half sure the contact he never found is lodged somewhere in his brain. Maybe it's acting like a conductor for all the weird shit, or something.

Greg looks at the smile on his face on the beach in the photo and thinks, fuck it, and takes his glasses off. He looks at his reflection and, yeah, it's a little funny, but he can still recognise himself. He walks backward to the other side of the room, and from there he can't read the writing on his shirt, but he can still recognise himself, and he figures that's good enough.

He runs a hand through his hair and ruffles it into disarray, and winks at his new reflection. He can't actually see the wink, but whatever. _Oh yeah_ he thinks with a blurred out grin, and figures he looks like some kind of censored victim of a crime-scene video.

He turns to leave the room, and then everything goes white for a second and he looks up and thinks blearily _wait, the wall isn't white,_ and realizes he's looking up at the ceiling.

When did he get on the floor?

He sits up with a groan and brings a hand to his head. Ow. What-?

His other hand reaches forward and he realises he'd just walked into the door. It drifts down to the shiny thing next to his legs, and figures he's just landed on and broken _another_ pair of glasses.

_Mother fu-_

\----------

It isn't so bad, Greg figures, to be walking around half blind. It's not like he can't tell if there's a lamppost in front of him in the street, or anything. He just has to be extra careful in the dark.

He's working on the force now, and he's figured out ways to get around it. If he gets paperwork, he just has to stick his nose right close to it to make sure he doesn't make any mistakes. He's actually gotten praised from a superior from being so intent on his work.

Reading from a computer screen sucks, though. the ever-present white glowing background obscures the black text just that little bit more, and he always finds himself squinting. He hopes it just looks like his deep-thinking face, or something. (He once had a girlfriend with a kid that had laughed herself silly at him, sat at the kid's bedside and reading a fairytale with a look of utmost serious concentration on his face. Lestrade thinks it wasn't fair for the publishers to print a children's book in such small writing. Don't kids usually read books that take up a whole page with one letter?)

He can usually zoom in on a computer though, so that's something, at least. Greg can't read any label at all ever though, which is fine, really; he's gotten used to surprises in his dinner, like finding he'd dumped a whole load of paprika in his soup, thinking it was chicken powder. Or vanilla in his spaghetti. Or putting pepper in his coffee. Dammit, when did they start making pepper white?

He's also unfortunately prone to running into his exes. He just can't recognise them from down the street, and plan an escape plan. He once got stuck on a five hour shopping trip, carrying his aunt's increasingly heavy bags the whole time and having to listen to her drone on and casually insult him. _just_ because he'd mistook her for some random man at the busstop. (although, to be fair, even _with_ glasses on she still looks like she's in drag.

Sometimes he think about just putting on a pair of glasses when he's out in public just to make his life a little easier. But he really doesn't want to look like that old fart of a grandfather. And to be fair, a pigeon hasn't cannonballed at his face since he was fifteen.

His glasses still get broken when he's at home, though. He's never babysitting a cat again.

Of course, if he hadn't memorized the route to the Yard in advance, he wouldn't recognise his own workplace even if he stood and stared up at the building from down the street. Greg figures the price of vanity takes a little piece of his sanity everytime he's accidentally walked into very embarrassing places. But he doesn't talk about those. Besides, Bobby was a lovely ma- er, woman, once he got to know her.

\----------

And then Sherlock Bloody Holmes just barges into his life.

"No, no, no! Wrong!" says the drugged up young man, gaunt and flailing wildly in Lestrade's face. He's close enough that Greg figures the lad needs a good meal.

The curly-haired menace continues to prance about the office, making everyone extremely uncomfortable as he rattles on about about their personal lives, and then prattles on about underfoot gravel from a nearby worksite and the smell of a particular brand of paint and just what in holy heck is he on?

"Right, come on," Greg rolls his eyes as he drags this six-foot-something stick of manic energy to the nearest holding cell. Because even though the lad maybe sounds like he knows what he's on about, Greg hasn't been in the police for nothing and he's going to wait till the bloke's sober to listen to him.

The lad - Sherlock - scowls at him from the other side of the bars, splaying himself dramatically across the cot. "You aren't listening to me!" Sherlock says, indignant, as if he's the one having to put up with a screw-loose preposterous weirdo.

"Maybe when you're sober, you can talk me through what you think you saw earlier," says Greg, and can't help the slight sliver of fondness for the young man.

"It was obvious!" hisses Sherlock, folding into a vicious pout.

"Not to me," says Lestrade, checking the lock, and turns to leave this particular headache in peace for a while.

He hears Sherlock make a _Tch_. "Are you _blind_?" comes the mutter from under the big blue scarf, full of scorn.

_Yes, actually,_ he thinks as he leaves.

And then there's this looming black car waiting for him outside, and he's taken to see this creepy as fuck guy who's all, _"Now, now, Gregory,"_ and he's told that the druggie back in the cell actually knows what he's on about. Then the other man starts threatening and Greg tells him to go screw himself, and that he'll bloody well take that stupid Sherlock on once he's clean from whatever, because it's a shame to waste apparantly brilliant minds and they could probably use the help now and then, anyway.

Greg wishes he could see the other man's expression as he flips him off in response to the bribary. Whoever this Sherlock bloke is, he won't be the one to sell him out. He's not a dirty cop.

When he gets back home and puts his glasses on and narrowly avoids the picture frame that decided to fall of its hinges and swing at his face just as he was walking by, Greg figures he's going to need some help when he pulls off the next drugs bust against this Sherlock guy. Because right now he's looking at a tin from his cupboard and he can't tell if it's Pepper or Sugar. He can lick his finger and dip it into this particular packet when he's at home, but sampling evidence is generally frowned on at work when it could be cocaine.

Greg makes a face when he finds out that what's in the tin doesn't taste like anything he'd put in his coffee.

\----------

Greg spits back into the polystyrene cup. He gags a little.

"Blehhh," Came out of his mouth as he scrapes his tongue against his teeth. They'd just gotten in a new machine at the Yard. It was big and red and shiny and made all sorts of different coffees.

Unfortunately, he had no idea what those coffees actually were. With the last one, he'd waited one night 'till everyone had gone home and had spent an hour peering closely at the buttons and trying to memorize which one he liked.

But he hadn't been able to wait today. There was this stupid case that just wouldn't _end_ , and he'd been gasping for some caffeine. The office had been full though, and he hadn't dared bend down to squint at the buttons like an idiot, so he'd figured what the heck, and picked the same one he'd seen Anderson press earlier that day.

Dammit. Milk always made him feel sick. He wasn't lactose intolerant - he'd eaten lots of stuff that had it in. But the strong _taste_ of it? The _texture_? The way it clung to the back of his throat?

Donovan came into his office just as he was trying to rub the taste out from his tongue with a tissue, half bent over the bin and a look of squinty sickness on his face. She stopped and stared, then sighed and put the paper she'd carried on his desk.

"I don't want to know," she said, and left.

Greg knelt next to the bin and gave it a cuddle, head hanging over it, and groaned again. He was determined not to throw up in his office (Sherlock would no doubt find out and mock him), but it didn't hurt to play safe.

Lestrade had always had a problem with remembering names. His head just refused to connect the dots. I'd was a small torture in his first few months at the Yard when he kept meeting new people and couldn't read their nametags.

And then if that wasn't enough, sometimes his brain would just _not_ make the connection even though he _knew_ he knew the damn name and he damned those damn name tags to hell.

He'd once spent five minutes doing nothing but staring at Anderson, mind blank.

"What?" the guy had said, sounding a bit uneasy. "Is there something on my face?"

And then it had come to him. "Walking!" He'd said, eyebrows shooting up. "You- it's, Spanish walking, I know it."

Anderson stared. "Are you high?"

Lestrade scowled.

Anderson sighed. "You are, aren't you? Did Holmes slip you something?"

Lestrade's face frowned, eyebrows scrunched in concentration. His mouth opened - "Dammit," he said, mind still drawing a blank. "I _swear_ I knew what it was a minute ago."

"I've told you not to take anything he gives you," Anderson said, "He lies. If he says it's coffee it just _isn't_."

"Andar," Greg muttered to himself.

" _An-der-son_ ," the other man said, rolling it out slowly like he was talking to a psycho with a knife.

"Yes! That's what I meant," Greg said, and despite frustration and embarrasment, he grinned. He knew it had sounded like the Spanish verb 'to walk'.

Anderson just rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer. Greg wondered if he should be worried that Anderson wasn't worried. Maybe they were all getting a little too used to Sherlock.

\----------  
Lestrade heard the sounds of Sherlock barging in on _another_ crime scene before he saw him and sighed. He knew Anderson could sometimes be annoying but really, couldn't Holmes follow protocol just once? Protocol was protocol for a _reason_.

And then Greg saw that a stranger had tagged along and oh, he couldn't see what defined his image, but he thought his shapes looked lovely. He had an endearingly kind voice, and Greg found it strangely fascinating when he stayed calm despite being obviously confused at being thrown in at the deep end of an investigation (and Sherlock had an assistant? when did _that_ happen?)

The next time Greg saw the man he greeted him by name. It wasn't until after Sherlock had argued himself out of a shock blanket when he'd seen the doctor again that he realised he'd never not known John's name to begin with (and he understood what Sherlock had meant when he'd been babbling about the shooter; he was a Detective Inspector, he wasn't a complete idiot.)

He saw John a lot after that. Sometimes the man was assisting Sherlock in a case, and sometimes they bumped into each other on the street and stopped for coffee and a chat.

One Saturday, Greg was supposed to go meet John for lunch, but he isn't going to go. He's going to stay at home on the couch with his scotch and forget everything, because a little girl had just died and there wasn't anything he could do. The image keeps hammering in his head of the little girl covered in red with a half-stuck on nametag that apparently said her name was Jenny but no matter how hard he tried he just couldn't make out the word. He looks at the label on his scotch when he takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes and every blurred word forms into Jenny in his head and he squeezes his eyes shut but the image just won't leave him alone.

There's a knock at his door but he doesn't get up.

Then whoever's on the other side just keeps knocking and he just doesn't care right now, but the knocks just get louder when he ignores them, so he hauls himself up and swings open the door with a _"what?"_

And then everything leaves his head as he sees that it's not just John on the other side of the door, it's _John._

Lestrade stares.

He can seethe colour of Johns eyes and the shape of his nose. The stray curls that fall in their own direction. The sincerity of his concern on his face, and the blush rising up his neck.

"Greg," says John with his eyebrows moving up, "You're wearing glasses."

There's a moment where his mind goes completely still and then he's mortified.

"Er," says Greg. Because, well. He is.

And Greg his unbelievably glad the latest glasses he'd bought were nothing like the ones his Grandpa used to wear. The one's he's got on now are slim and rectangular and you could barely see the frames. Through them he sees John, and notices the other man's eyes look down and then trail up, amusement showing through his eyes and smirk.

Greg follows John's gaze and feels embarrassed as it hits him that he's not looking anything like how he normally does at work. Greg's wearing faded blue jeans and bright purple socks, and a baggy _Scissor Sisters_ concert t-shirt that he got at the end of a crazy night that he's never going to forget.

He decides that John's eyes are far too intense in high definition and has too look at the spot to the side of John's head as he invites him in for lunch, and he realises that John's ears dostick out as much as he'd thought.

As he moves into the kitchen to make the sandwiches with John settling in on the couch behind him, he catches sight of himself in the mirror, and turns away when he sees his own answering blush.

He hopes John doesn't think that Greg looks like his grandpa.


End file.
